Cortona was one of the 12 cities of the Etruscan confederation, and the proliferation of artifacts discovered in the area led to the founding of an Etruscan Academy in 1727. The collections are now housed in the Palazzo Casali, a 13th-century mansion built for the city's governors; the building's side is embedded with centuries' worth of gubernatorial coats of arms.

The first room contains numerous small bronze devotional figures of Etruscan and Roman origin covering a period from the 6th to the 1st century B.C., along with some 15th-century northern Italian ivories and a remarkably intact 4th- or 5th-century-A.D. paleo-Christian glass chalice. The pride of the museum's collection is an Etruscan oil lamp chandelier from the late 4th century B.C. decorated with human heads, allegorical figures, and a few virile Pans playing their pipes, all surrounding a leering Gorgon's head on the bottom. On the walls hang paintings spanning the Renaissance and baroque periods, with works by Luca as well as Francesco Signorelli, Pinturicchio, Pietro da Cortona, Empoli, and Cristofano Allori. The one painting set apart is the famous Musa Polimnia, an encaustic (pigmented wax on wood) portrait that has of late been accused of being an 18th-century fake rather than a 1st-century-A.D. Roman original.

The small Egyptian collection includes some brightly colored wood sarcophagi and a rare wooden model of a funerary boat. In the jumble of Etruscan remains and post-16th-century fine and decorative arts filling the next few rooms, don't miss the 19th-century Cantonese chessboard or the elaborately rococo glazed ceramic Tempietto Ginori (1756), dripping with fanciful allegorical figures and studded with portrait medallions. There's also a 12th- or 13th-century Tuscan mosaic of a Madonna with oversized hands praying. Its psychedelic coloring makes it look almost like a modern work; keep this in mind when you see actual 20th-century mosaics around town (especially the Passion stations on the steep Via Santa Margherita) done by Gino Severini. Severini (1883-1966) was Cortona's most recent artistic master, and the last room on this floor is devoted to his works. Severini's goal apparently was to paint at least one piece in every major artistic style and movement from the first half of this century, though he was ostensibly a die-hard Futurist.

Upstairs is an exhibition of the ongoing excavations of the Melone II tomb and its altar, a remarkable Etruscan find first uncovered in 1990 . The more portable pieces from the dig have been removed here for safekeeping, and there's also a plaster cast of one of the sphinxes from the altar.

Open Hours

Tues-Sun 10am-7pm (until 5pm Nov-Mar)

Prices

Admission 4.20€ ($5.45) adults, 2.50€ ($3.25) children

Web site : www.accademia-etrusca.org/museo